I’m not one for crying. It’s cool if you like to cry though. I may be slightly awkward about it, but I will offer words of encouragement and try my hardest at a sympathetic look. It will probably look a little bit pained, but don’t worry, I don’t think anything bad of criers. It’s just not my thing. That being said, I was bawling last Thursday. It’s pretty much a given that for me to be crying something awful must have happened. Or I’m in the middle of enjoying some soup with friends, one of the two. This was the case of an awful incident though. In hindsight however, the incident makes a pretty good story, so here goes. PS country and city names have been strategically left out, sorry if it makes it confusing, but you never know if the man is watching!
So anyways, I’m away from Canada for six months. But I only get 1 month approved to stay here at a time, so every thirty days or so I head over to immigration to get a stamp in my passport. On Thursday my thirty days was up, so my friend drove me to the immigration office.
I went up to the office where there were three people “working”. One lady was helping customers while two men stared out a window. This is pretty typical here. So once the lady was finally done with the person in front of me, the men were still fascinated by a car or bird or something outside, I handed her my passport requesting one more month. “That will be twenty dollars” She said.
“Of course”, I replied, digging through my wallet. She flipped through my passport and saw that I have already been here for three months. “Why do you want to be in the country for so long?”
“Well,” I replied, “I’m working at a Church so I’m actually hoping to stay for a total of six months.” Shoot, I realized my mistake right away and quickly tried to correct it. “Well working’s not the right term, I’m just volunteering at a Church, you know helping out with youth and stuff while I’m here. It’s not really a job.”
“Ahh, well whether you are paid or not it is still work.” That didn’t sound too good, but I shrugged it off with a nervous laugh. Her attention was now turned to a man who had just walked in. He came straight to the counter where she was helping me and started telling her what he needed. So she helped him instead of me (again this is standard practice). Ten minutes later she was done helping him and her attention was back on me. “May I have my stamp please?” I asked, handing her my passport and $20.
“Ah see, that is what I was trying to tell you” (uh she was not trying to tell me anything, she was ignoring me to help someone else, but this was not time to be sassy) “I can’t give you the stamp” “Why not?” “You are working, to work here you had to get a $500 working visa, you don’t have the right visa.”
“No, I’m not working. I don’t have a job that I have to show up to, I just help out at my church. I let the embassy in Canada know exactly what I would be doing and this is the Visa they gave me so how can it be wrong?”
“Okay, I will give you three days to get out of the country.”
Get out of the country! I can’t do that, I have youth and kids club and friends. I am helping plan youth ablaze and am looking forward to attending. I still haven’t seen the whole country or bought everyone back in Canada souvenirs. This is home, I can’t leave!! This is when the tears started to flow. I tried very hard to hold them back and still be audible. “I can’t leave. The embassy gave me this visa, I told them I wanted to be here for six months.”
“You don’t understand. This Visa is for six months. That means you can enter the country anytime in those six months, it doesn’t mean you can stay here that long.”
Thank you lady for that completely irrelevant piece of information, I’m not trying to enter the country, I’m trying to stay in. “No I get that. I understand I come back for a stamp every thirty days, I’ve been doing that for the last three months. What I don’t get is why I can’t continue to stay here.”
“You could stay if you are on holiday, but because you are volunteering you have to leave.”
We continued to banter back and forth, me hardly understandable between sobs, and her with her mind made up that I was a threat to the country and had to be shipped back to Canada ASAP. I was praying that this lady would understand and be sympathetic. Eventually I realized that she was not about to change her mind, and Emmerson was not about to barge in to save the day like I was secretly hoping. So concluding that logic and pleading my case were futile, I grabbed my unstamped passport and my twenty dollars and informed the immigration officers that I was going to go downstairs to talk to my friend, and I would be right back up.
“You can’t leave,” they told me, “your visa expires today, you need to come back.”
“I will, I’ll be right back, I just have to talk to my friend.” As I walked down the stairs there was no more holding back my tears. They were flowing relentlessly. Em was not far from the bottom of the stairs, talking to another member of our Church. “Emm-er-son –they-told-me-I-have-to-leave” I said as quickly as possible through the sobbing. “What?” I don’t know if he asked because he wanted me to explain or because he couldn’t understand what I said. So I explained what had happened. Our friend made some helpful suggestions. Emmerson thought for a second then said “Right, I’ll take you to Kerry.” So we left. Yes I had told immigration I would be right back, but I was distraught and happy to not have to go back up there. As you will see this was not one of my most morally astute days. So he brought me to Kerry, whose home I am staying at while I’m here. After relating the story to her, we decided we would drive three hours to the capital city and try the immigration office there.
So we filled up the truck and were on our way. Three 35ºC air conditionerless hours later, we were at the other immigration office. We firmly established that we would not use the word “work” and entered. While waiting in line we saw another girl that we know from Scotland. We exchanged greetings and she asked why we didn’t just get it done in our hometown. “Uhhh, it’s Kendall’s birthday today and we wanted to see her.” Technically that was true, but you see what I meant about the lack of morality in my day. Within five minutes of entering I had my passport stamped and another thirty days in the country secured, no questions asked. And another four hours later (we did spend some time with Kendall) we were back home.
So I learned to be careful of what I say. People are definitely paying attention. Unfortunately sometimes that means they are trying to find information they can use to execute their authority over you, try to get a bribe, or some other corrupt motive. It’s not just the intention of our words, or the concept behind them, every word we say matters. People can’t see into each others minds (thank goodness) to interpret what we mean when our words are unclear, and more often than not they don’t care to learn our intentions regardless. I like to think that I usually do consider my words carefully, but this showed me just how careless I really can be with my words. It also instilled that words can’t be taken back once they’re out there. One careless word and I almost got kicked out of a country. This time I was able to get a clean slate with someone I did not know, but if there were no other options I would be back in Canada by now. Our words are powerful, we must not be careless with them, and we especially must not be vindictive with them.
Also it turns out I now think of here as home. It seems everywhere I go I gain a new place to miss when I’m gone. Also a new place to love and treasure and to have people I can call family. I think it is a pretty fair trade off, and I am really excited for my remaining three (God willing) months here to continue building those relationships and deepening my roots in this wonderful country.
Also I may be thought to be a fugitive by some people. Oops.
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
be acceptable in your sight,
O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.-Psalm 19:14
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